New Beginnings

At last, after all this time, after all the trials and tribulations, I HAVE A MAC!





This bad boy is going to help me work through my Final Major Project and generally elevate me to new heights in the future.

I'm not blogging this to rub it in anybody's face; I've had to put up with a rubbish PC for ever. If I open a folder containing 20 photos, my PC crashes and then moans that it has no virtual memory left. It's painstaking.

But Maccy is with me now, and I won't be slowed down or held back any longer,

Weeeeeeeee!

xLouisax

[EDIT] I've had my mac for a few days now and things are going really great ^_^ It's so fast and powerful. They say that technology can't make you happy but I actually wake up every morning and I see it, and smile - it's like waking up to someone. ;)

No Added Sugar Exhibition

The No Added Sugar Exhibition, which took place on the 14th and 15th December 2010 in humble Epsom, Surrey, was an exhibition entirely funded and organised by 3rd year Graphic Design students of The University of Creative arts, Epsom.



It featured current project work by me and some fellow students on my course, and we even had a shop to sell our postcards, cards and little books.

My wall space featured my project, Epsom Characters of course! I was especially happy with how well my set of postcards printed - such good quality prints and they looked amazing! I made £4.50 selling them!




It was also great fun spending the day there setting everything up, splitting into teams to get certain jobs done. I was on the refreshments team so it was our job to go to Asda and buy all the booze! Then we had to regulate the refreshments while the exhibition was running. Other than that, everybody helped to set up the room and workshop together. During the second day, I joined the Workshop crew who were all making live arts and crafts, so I took the opportunu=ity to catch up on some bookbinding. On the whole it was excellently organised and we all worked very well together!





We were all of us appaled at the complete lack of support from out University's PR and of how dismissive they were about the whole thing. We really could have used their help to promote our exhibition, and they shouldn't have taken all of our posters down around Uni (which we had permission to put up).

Nevertheless, this made us even more determined to pull it off, by ourselves. It must just be embarassing for them to now be hearing about how wonderful it went and how much kudos it ultimately brought our University. For them to not have taken this opportunity to promote us, and show prospective students just how organised and determined our University students can be, must mean that they're idiots.

This is not to say that our tutors didn't help us; they were all very supportive and encouraging throughout the whole process and we were very thankful for this. :)

Weeeee!

xLouisax

My Dissertation - Tomb Raider

I'm really excited about my dissertation*; it sums up my interests and passions in life. If I could go back in time and tell my 10 year old self that I get to write my dissertation on Tomb Raider I'd be like "No way, that's too awesome. I actually don't believe you!"




You'd better believe it sister! I'm writing about Lara Croft, the Grand Theft Auto series, and even a bit about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Why?

I've studied film before, and media theories don't need a genius to be applied to gaming. It is, afterall a massive part of our culture. In my essay, I discuss the pros and cons of Lara Croft being a role model to young girls.



It turns out that Lara Croft is actually a really good role model! Aside from her comically oversized breasts, she's independent, fit, adventurous and brave. She don't rely on no-one but herself!

I'm comparing Lara to other female game characters and alongside this, discussing feminist theories, female representation and fetishism. Why do we fetishise women? Why do both men and women accept the scantily-clad, big-boobed female character without question? Yes, Isabella Valentine (below), I am talking about you!



Now here's a round of trivia to round off your evening.

Trivia #1
There's another really cool part to this discussion. Freud wrote about Fetishism, and explained that the reason why men fetishise women is because Woman, the castrated form of a man, is a scary thing to get their head around. Due to their anxiety about the castrated woman, the only way they can deal with our existence is by making us become a fetish; a weird sexual thing. Second to this, another way to deal with their anxiety is for them to see us as an object of beauty, to be appreciated. I guess it makes sense. We are in a male world after all, or maybe Freud was just a perve like the rest of 'em. :p

Trivia #2
As soon as Lara's assets were made smaller (which was done in order to appeal more to female gamers) in 2005, shares in the game plummeted and sales did all the same. What does this all mean?

All the best,

Louisa Brooks

*A Dissertation is when you basically write a book, and it is required in order to get a BA hons Degree. My Dissertation word count needs to be 6000 words - the longest essay I have ever had to write!

Epsom Characters Quartet!

I have completed my Epsom Characters series. Please click on the Issuu below to view them.

Creating Bike Man was by far the most challenging. I've spent that last couple of weeks drawing faces, bikes, rough-looking people, punks, you name it!

Open publication - Free publishing

My Epsom characters are to be displayed in the No Added Sugar exhibition which has been funded and organised entirely by students in my year group. It takes place next week in the Ebbisham Centre, Epsom, Surrey.

I hope none of the residents these characters are based on turn up! God that will be awkward.

All the best,

Louisa Brooks

Steampunk Superhero!

So instead of working on my actual Uni work, yet again, I spent my weekend participating in a CHOW I couldn't resist...

STEAMPUNK SUPERHERO!!





Daisy's superpower is that she never misses. A policeman told me that if someone pulled a gun on you, and you ran away, if they shot at you 100 times they'd only hit you four times, and it probably wouldn't even be a critical hit. So I gave my Steampunk Superhero the power of the perfect shot!

Creating a Steampunk Superhero was quite relevent to my work actually, as Steampunk predominantly features Victorian fashion, and as soon as I have finished my Epsom Characters I'm going to dilly-dally with period costume/characters again. :)

All the best,

xLouisax

Fable III and Steampunk Superhero

When I got my limited edition Fable III it arrived the day before release, and yes, it arrived in the most epic box (including a pack of cards and a medallion). <----- GEEK ALERT!



And it is amazing! Here are some screenshots of the beginning, when you're a Princess (if you choose to be a girl <3) and you spend some time running around your castle. The interior in the castle is amazing.











In case you didn't already know, I'm obsessed with costume, and Fable III features some really cool designs. Everything in the game looks so beautiful; the towns, streets, walks, castles, it's all so visually lush. This is why I want to be in the games industry, the art team must just be so amazing. In fact, the creators of Fable III, Lionhead Studios, are just down the road in Guildford, so I need to get in touch and try to score an internship there. (SERIOUSLY, HOW AMAZING WOULD THAT BE??)

And even better, this week's CHOW is 'Design a Steampunk Superhero', which is basically Fable III! So I'm on it like a car bonnet. Did some quick Steampunk research sketches, into some typical Steampunk features, followed by some design thumbs!





All the best,

xLouisax

Bookbinding Workshop

Taking part in Mette-Sofie Ambeck's bookbinding workshop at Uni was one of the best ideas I ever had! She taught us how to make a hard-back book from scratch. Here is the book I made during the workshop, using random paper for the pages.







And here's one I made earlier... Some friends and I went to the bookbinding shop in London to buy some vital bookbinding supplies, and since then, using my ever growing pile of dissertation books as a home-made press, I was able to produce a small black hardback book.









I made much more mistakes this time (especially with the spine!) so I learnt a lot more but I managed to emboss the front cover.

I wanted to learn this skill, not just because it's completely awesome, but because the project I am working on at present has to be made into a book, and I may also make books for my FMP. It's also just a really nice skill to have; I could make little mock-ups of something I need to publish, or simply make quirky limited edition books featuring my Illustrations.

It's an amazing skill to have, I strongly recommend doing a bookbinding workshop, if for nothing else, just for the fun of making books.

All the best,

xLouisax

Epsom characters

Something I am doing at the moment for Uni is creating characters based on real people in Epsom, Surrey. I started out by sketching real people, the moment before they cross the road on the high street. I began to notice the different types of people in Epsom, the way they talk, act, the things they wear.




I enjoyed drawing their clothes the most. I like the way that clothes hang off the body or ruck up in one corner.



A character I finalised was 'Old Biddy', who is a distillment of all of the old ladies I saw around Epsom. She turned out to be quite popular, so my tutor has encouraged me to do more.

There are a few legendary people around Epsom that I am planning to draw:

1) Old Biddy - Complete
2) Elderly Identical Twins - Complete
3) Blind man and his Dog - ? :(
4) Crazy Epsom man - Complete
5) Bike Man - In Progress

Trust me, it's gonna be good! :D

All the best,

xLouisax

Costume studies

I recently visited the Museum of London and the V&A to scout out beautiful dresses! It was nice to be able to draw a costume from life, and not just a book, as it was easier for me to see how the dress fitted together and gave me a much more realistic feel of the form and shape. I also took lots of notes about the period, about things that effected the way people dressed, and the kinds of luxuries women from London could afford. It was tres interesting.

With my research I am planning to make an 18th Century dress-up game! Eeeeeee! :D

All the best,

xLouisax

CHOW - Zombify yourself!

I've been busy making images using a new method, that is, vectorising my sketches, and then painting over them in Photoshop. Above is my entry for Conceptart.org's Character of the Week challenge, 'Zombify yourself.' It was great fun, and I got two votes, wohooo!

I now have an excuse to do CHOW every week, as it is a part of my 'External Positioning' project for school, which basically means that we position ourselves appropriately in the industry, and one way of doing that is by throwing yourself out there and taking part in competitions.

I love chow, I can't wait to start working on it for next week's brief.

All the best,

xLouisax

Hello Kitty Fanzine

Open publication - Free publishing - More zine

Making a Hello Kitty fanzine for a day-project at Uni was very very very fun. It is now complete! Muahahahahahahaaa!

All the best,

xLouisax

My name is Louisa and I am a Hello Kitty-holic.

Just in case you are not already aware of the matter, I am completely obsessed with Hello Kitty. Ever since it started being rebranded with its funky stationary sets in WHSmiths, my collection of Hello Kitty has grown.

I'm not sure why it is that I like Kitty so much. It may be simply because Kitty is such a colourful, happy character, and all merchandise based on her radiates these feelings. Most importantly, the Hello Kitty brand is kiddy and cute and that is totally my bag, baby!

A few of the items are gifts from friends, but most were brought by myself. I have 24 items to date.

(I have actually been given three more items since making this blog post; a keyring, a t-shirt and an actual Kitty plush doll - It is an ever-growing phenomenom... in my room atleast...)

All the best,

xLouisax

Girl Pirate Dress-up game

My tutors set me the task:

"Do Something you've never done before; something outside your comfort zone. Something you never thought you'd do but perhaps have always wanted to do."

So I decided to make a flash dress-up game!! I recently found a tutorial that showed me how you can program such a game in flash so I decided to give it a go. I've always wanted to make one of these, I'm glad I was given an excuse to do it.

This was out of my comfort zone for two reasons:

1) Flash I have used Flash in the past, but it is definately my weakest program. Every time I use it (which is hardly ever) I have to relearn the way it works.
2) The last day Spending all that time vectorizing the pirate and girl and all her clothes, and hoping that I would be able to program it all to make it work on the last day was not an experience I enjoyed!

I'm planning to make some kind of activity pack for my FMP, so this was a lovely way to test out one of the things i was thinking of doing. Of course this is a very basic game, and if I was to take this further I could be much more ambitious with working buttons and changing backgrounds etc. Also, I could make her clothes look more realistic. Not having the time to add folds and shadows to the clothes made me die a little inside. :p


Play the game here!


Enjoy,

xLouisaxx

Stop-frame animation cherry!

My tutors set me the brief "Make a 3 minute video....". So naturally, if any subject is groovy it's going to be about art. I love motivational quotes and I love art, so I've made a stop-frame animation about art quotes.



To be honest, not bad for my first ever stop-frame animation. The problems I had with this brief were:

1) I have no video-editing software or powerful computer at home so I found this brief to be horrificly unfair for people in my situation (especially with a shoddy University library that is barely open).

2) The video-editing software I opted to use was IMovie which I've never used before. It's a bit rubbish though isn't it, I mean, you can't do any faster than 10fps which means that I had to delete TONS of photos in order to make it less than 3 minutes long. This also added to the horrible jerky movements of the animation.

But whatever, I can't change it now, this is what I am submitting, and in general I am proud of it; cock-ups and all.

What have I learnt?

Well, now that I've made my first stop-frame animation, and made just about every mistake you possibly can with this method, hopefully this means that when I have to make another stop-frame animation IT WILL BE AMAZING!

All the best,

xlouisax

An amazing 'No Smoking' collection

You always find gems when you're not looking for them. That's how I felt when I stumbled across Daniel Eatock's "ongoing collection of alternatives to compliment the archetypal ‘No Smoking’ sign(s)".

You can check out all of them on Eatock's website. You should, some of them actually made me lol!
http://www.eatock.com/project/no-smoking-sign-request/

xx

Living out of boxes

I am at my parents house and there is nothing to do! I brought my laptop and tablet with me, hoping that I would finally get some time to do some art but I'm a wally and seem to have forgotten my power lead!

It's annoying because for the past few weeks I've been busy moving to my new house and having no internet, so I haven't really been able to do anything.

So I decided there is nothing for it, I'm stuck here with nothing to do, so I am completing my favourite retro game of all time, 'Skies of Arcadia'!





I'm not even joking how much I love this game; it has got to be 12 years old and it still sends shivers down my spine! I actually think it was one of the main reasons why I initially wanted to become a concept artist. And I run its fanclub on Deviantart.com, which I recently revived (MEGA-GEEK!) :D

Oh, and I also recently bought the official soundtrack; the most awesome game sountrack ever written!

I shall listen to it while finishing off some of my current SoA fanart. <3 <3

All the best,

xLouisax

Classical painting

I went to the Tate Britain the other day, which is my favourite gallery in London. All of the paintings there are absolutely amazing, but I came across one that I've never really noticed before.



Francis Danby, (1793-1861) 'The wood nymph's hymn to the rising sun'

This is so beautiful! I never thought I'd like such a dark painting but all of the elements work together so beautifully. It must be the soft glow of the rising sun; the warmth of its colour and the power it has over all of the other elements of the painting. A snap-shot of a precious moment at dawn. Definately a fave <3

Grayscale painting

I took last week's Chow as an excuse to try a new method of painting; to paint the whole thing in grayscale, and then add the colour on top with a 'colour' blend layer.

I found this method reaaallly challenging! :( I'd figured that it would be important to get the blacks and whites right, so that the colours would come out well, but it's sooo easier said than done. All the colours came out reaaally wierd and I felt like I had absolutely no control over what I was trying to do.

Maybe the grays I was painting over were completely wrong or maybe I just need to get the hang of this method a little more. Either way, I will try this method again, and I can only get better at it right?



Last week's chow was Marie Antoinette. CAKE!

Environment of the week

I've been really getting into www.conceptart.org lately and all of their community acvities, particularly Environment of the Week and Character of the week. I've actually got off my arse and competed in them!

I'm hoping that being involved with something like this, and competing as often as I can will develop and sharpen my skills. It's nice because everybody helps each other out and shares advice and the whole experience is really encouraging. S'all good!






I think one of the reasons why it's so good is because the theme of the week is always completely random which makes excellent practice for a concept artist. Above is my entry for EOW's 'Into the woods' theme, which was extremely challenging because I've never painted a woods before! Tres tricky :'(





Also here was my entry for CHOW's 'Gaia' which I went off-breif a little with ^_^' but I still kinda like it!